Personal LibertyBob Livingston provides you with a conservative, Christian view on life. Helping you live free in an unfree world. Delivering news on improving you health, boosting your wealth, and protecting your civil liberties."

As I write this we are nearing Memorial Day 2016, and I realize that there will be numerous articles published over the next few days which will examine the achievements and sacrifices of American veterans killed in action. With that subject thoroughly covered, I thought I might instead confront a topic that many people out there would rather not discuss. Get ready for the discomfort levels to increase dramatically, because we are going to tackle the problems surrounding women in combat.

Now, it has been incredibly trendy the past five years or so to ride the warrior woman bandwagon, and to speak against it is to automatically earn accusations of “misogyny.”

With the third-wave feminist and social-justice agenda increasingly out in the open rather than remaining subtly subversive, you really can’t walk anywhere without stepping in a big steaming pile of propaganda. A large number of films and television shows released today, from Mad Max and Star Wars remakes to comic book movies and TV miniseries galore, all seem to be designed to promote the feminist ideology. And, an important part of this ideology is the idea that men and women are exactly the same in almost every capacity. That is to say, everything a man can do, a woman can do just as well or better, including fight and kill.

I have to say, I find the spread of this delusion rather disturbing for several reasons. As a mixed martial arts instructor for over 14 years, I have worked with many men and women in combat training and combat mindset. I have never refused to train a woman based on her gender. That said, as training progresses and they reach a certain level of proficiency, I will always have every woman face off with a man for moderate sparring. From my observations, the experience for some of them can be rather shocking.

For those who have never dealt with a violent assault in their lives, the mental concept of what women are capable of physically rarely matches reality. The sheer disparity in strength and speed between most men and most women is incredible. The average woman’s natural upper body strength alone is only 50 percent of the average man’s. If you want to witness this vast difference in action, I highly suggest you observe a rape prevention course in your area in which a man in a padded suit simulates an assault on the female students. Invariably, all the women are subdued and immobilized within seconds. When these women come out of training (far wiser than before), many of them purchase a firearm.

I have also trained women within various community preparedness team classes dealing with small arms combat tactics and movement, and of course, they have many limitations, but the biggest is simply being able to function physically at a similar level to male trainees.

I realize that these are merely my own experiences and observations, and your average social justice warrior will argue that there are historical examples of women successfully operating in combat environments. This is not in dispute. I would point out, however, that these instances are the exception, not the rule.

To be clear, I am mostly supportive of the idea of women in the military, as long as they meet the same standards required of men, and that those standards are not artificially lowered in order to accommodate women who would otherwise fail. But, the maniacal feminists are driving to make everything in the world “equal” when it simply is not and never will be. If you cannot make men and women equal in every arena naturally, then you have to do it through force or dishonesty or bureaucracy.

Also, it seems to me that the government may not be pushing for women in combat roles only to appease the political correctness cult. The fact that elements of Congress are attempting to add women to the draft (selective service) makes me think that they know something we do not. Is the federal government preparing for war on an even greater scale than is taking place today? If so, then the propaganda train for women in combat makes perfect sense. Allowing the conscription of women would double the government’s pool of potential cannon fodder.

In the meantime, women are bombarded with fantastical imagery in popular media of 100 pound girls pummeling hordes of 200 pound men and reigning victorious, giving them a false sense of invincibility that will lure them into combat service.

The pressure from military brass and politicians in Washington is bearing down on recruitment and training centers. In 2013, General Martin E. Dempsey laid down an edict proclaiming that if women cannot meet current standards for combat roles, then senior commanders had better lower those standards.

The “Dempsey rule” had its first test in 2015 when the Marines studied the success rate of 29 women in their Infantry Officers Course. Of the 29 women who entered the course, none passed the standards. Only four women made it through the first day’s combat endurance test.

The Marines also undertook a nine-month-long experiment to form mixed-gender combat units and study performance rates. The results were dismal. Female participants were injured twice as often as men, were less accurate with infantry small arms and had trouble moving wounded troops from the battlefield.

The Marine study also found that all male units had superior performance in 93 of 134 evaluated tasks compared to mixed gender units.

Washington politicians and military brass have treated these results not as a practical warning, but as a threat to their agenda, claiming that current training standards are “no longer relevant on today’s battlefield”.

As Gen. Dempsey later stated:

“If we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn’t make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high?”

So, now it becomes the burden of military commanders and trainers to argue the case for every single standard, standards which have been successful for decades but are now deemed “passé”. Meaning, standards that were always considered fair for men must now be treated as unfair for women. This is not only backwards thinking, it is pure insanity which puts all military personnel at risk.

The U.S. Army has essentially already been forced to lower training standards in order to meet what some call “unspoken quotas” of female soldiers. As it turns out, the much lauded recent success of two women in the passage of the Army’s extremely difficult Ranger School was a bit of a farce.

According to multiple sources within Fort Benning, the Ranger School was told that a woman would graduate the first gender integrated assessment of combat leadership; meaning, at least one would be passed regardless of performance.

While 16 other women failed the course outright, Kristine Giest and Shaye Haver were pushed through to graduation. Special treatment included advantages like — women were given two weeks of extra training prior to men arriving at the school, and were acclimated to tests ahead of schedule while men had to attempt the same tests cold bore. Women were allowed multiple attempts to pass the program while men were given a strict pass/fail standard. Women were given extra nutritional counseling and a private Ranger tutor. Women were allowed to practice the land navigation course ahead of schedule; men had to approach the course cold. Women were allowed to repeat portions of the course until achieving a satisfactory score; men were not. A two star general was on the scene during training to cheer for women participants, truly revealing the political nature of the gender integrated assessment.

Kristine Geist was even quoted as saying at a press conference before graduation:

“I thought we were going to be dropped after we failed Darby [obstacle course] the second time… We were offered a day one recycle.”

Clearly, in order for the cultural Marxists in our government to attain “gender equality” in the U.S. military, standards must be decidedly unequal and advantages must be stacked in favor of women. But what are the consequences of this?

Some might argue that it really does not matter if standards are lowered for women; they deserve the same opportunities as men anyway. I disagree.

The beauty of physical prowess, physical competition, mental toughness and yes, even combat, is that superior merit is the only thing that matters. The best rise to the surface immediately, and the inadequate fall by the wayside, and there is no question or argument as to what is “fair” — two men enter, one man leaves — as they say in ‘Thunderdome’.

The winners are the winners, and the results speak for themselves. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of world many Americans are used to living in anymore.

In our increasingly collectivized society, merit is not even a factor anymore. Victim status groups are given special treatment everywhere, regardless of their lack of qualifications or performance. Universities hand out scholarships based on cultural identity rather than grades or test scores. Corporations maintain multicultural quotas due to affirmative action even if said people are less qualified. Everywhere we look, standards are being erased in the name of political correctness.

This degrades our society as a whole and diminishes our capacity for higher productivity, ingenuity and advancements that could improve the lives of millions. When the best people for the job are consistently overlooked in favor of mediocre people, a mediocre culture results. And mediocre cultures have a tendency to implode.

It might be possible to argue that catering to the lowest common denominator in the civilian world will not result in outright death and carnage, but no one can argue that catering to the lowest common denominator in the military will result in anything but death and carnage.

First, if female participants in training cannot meet the same standards as men and are passed anyway, they will not receive the respect or trust of those soldiers when they enter into combat. No male soldiers will feel safe within a mixed gender unit if the women are sub-par hacks that might get them killed.

Second, lowering the standards for both men and women would result in a military of weaklings.

Third, women in combat through history are marginal and usually fight because of national desperation (the Soviet stand against the Nazi blitzkrieg is an example of such desperation). A common example used by feminists to argue in favor of women in combat is the Israeli IDF, which conscripts women as well as men. But feminists and pro-female combatant advocates greatly misrepresent the level of participation IDF women have in combat roles. The IDF does not generally place women into special combat units or front line units, and women are confined to light battalions for nothing more than border security. Even the Israelis with one of the most gender-mixed military’s in the world knows better than to commit women to heavy combat.

Fourth, military effectiveness usually depends on unit cohesion. This means that they operate best in teams and each member of the team represents a link in the chain. One weak link can result in the failure of the entire chain.

Finally, the safety of other soldiers is not the only risk. The women themselves also face extreme health hazards.

According to U.S. Army Institute Of Public Health, in basic combat training women suffer a 114 percent greater injury rate than men, and a 108 percent greater injury rate in medical and engineering training.

At least one female Marine captain with considerable courage, Katie Petronio, has come out in opposition to women in combat roles, citing extreme health hazards including infertility, which she now suffers due to the dangerous physical damage incurred during training. See her excellent interview here.

While women are supposedly at no greater risk than men for PTSD, I have to voice one of my greatest concerns here. Military activities are not always in service of that which is honorable; as Major General Smedley Butler famously said, “War is a racket!” When military personnel fight and die and witness their friends die for what they later discover is an unjust cause, PTSD as well as other disorders will result in higher frequency. The justness of various wars is beyond the scope of this article, but a society at war, wrong or right, is basically sending their sons to be mentally battered. Some will make it back stable, and others will not. Now, we are talking about sending our daughters into the same psychological hellscape?

What kind of culture will we have left when both mothers and fathers are sent off to the meat grinder, perhaps both coming back scarred? For centuries, men have been going to war to keep women and children safe from witnessing the inherent horrors of combat at their doorstep. It’s not ideal, but sending women into the fray as well based on false pretenses is even less ideal.

Men and women are undeniably different — one is not better than the other, we just serve different roles in nature, and nature cannot be denied. Women are biologically inclined to bear children and to nurture families. Men are biologically inclined to protect and provide. Men are genetically designed for combat. Women are not. If a woman can meet the same standards as a man in military training, then she deserves the option of that role, but as recent studies have shown, this is not going to happen very often. Instead, an apparatus of cultural Marxism is forcefully opening a door to disaster; an entire generation of daughters and mothers will be duped into a role they are not built for or prepared for, ending in psychological and physical degradation they have no concept of, and weakening the very foundations of our nation for decades to come.